On October 7 the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) listserv announced that EUS’ President had resigned from the position. VP Internal Eric Kueper will fill the position of Interim-President, as well as continuing his duties as VP Internal, until the position is filled.
According to both Kueper and VP External Bryan Gingras, the EUS Executive found out about the resignation at the Executive meeting on October 3. The Executive then waited to bring the resignation forward to the first EUS Council meeting of the year on October 7, before sending the email out to address engineering students.
As per the EUS Constitution, there will be no election for the new President, as mandated by Section I, Article 20, which states, “In the case of a vacancy in the position of President, the Vice-President Internal shall assume the responsibilities of President until the EUS Council has ratified the nomination of a new President.”
The selection committee, which will include all members of the Executive as well as one representative from each department of EUS, will accept applications for a two week period – lasting until October 21 – before they make a selection.
“The application process is the same as when you are applying for the election, where the President needs to gather 50 signatures from the student body to be put on the ballot,” Gingras stated, adding that anyone who is a member of the EUS can step forward.
“Obviously not everyone will want to run for President, because obviously not everyone is aware of what the presidency of the EUS entails,” he told The Daily in an interview.
According to Gingras, the President’s roles have been divided between the executives “so we will be able to perform with minimal interruption.”
“When we first found out we immediately discussed as an executive, talked to Zac [the former president] to understand where he was with his portfolio, and established who would take on which role in terms of managing things,” Kueper stated in an interview with The Daily.
Kueper was confident that things were going “extremely well” due to division of the roles. The division was something not mandated by EUS constitution, instead a decision made by the executives.
One of the portfolios of the President includes overseeing the state of equity within EUS. When Zac Moreland, the former President, resigned, the EUS was going forward with the selection of its new Equity Commissioner. According to Kueper, EUS VP Communications Luis Pombo stepped in to handle the selection normally handled by the President.
On October 10, the EUS announced that Christopher Tegho, a fourth-year Electrical Engineering student, would assume the position for the 2013-14 academic year.
“I have a plan for the year,” said Tegho in an interview with The Daily. “This semester I want to, in collaboration with EUS and the Social Equity and Diversity Education Office (SEDE), discuss the issues – social equity issues – within the Faculty of Engineering.”
“It is important because the EUS has a lot of events, especially during Frosh – and even outside of Frosh – where social equity, safer space, needs to be established, in order to include everyone in Engineering.”
Tegho also mentioned his desire to create workshops for EUS next semester dealing with equity and diversity that would deal with issues such as racism, gender, and sexual assault.
Tegho explained that “I noticed that there was a lot of people in Engineering that do not have any idea of what safer space means, or never heard about it.”
“It would be ideal to create this conversation […] whenever I try to have this conversation it ends up (sic) very fast, nobody is interested or it becomes very problematic and we need to shut it down because it hurts people. So I would like to [have] such conversations not end like that.”